CHAPTER XVI.

INTELLIGENCE AT LAST.

On seeing Constance without her bonnet, and with her dark hair somewhat in disorder, the first impression of the General was, how extremely like her daughter she proved, and how very youthful too; for her figure, as we have elsewhere said, was petite; her features were minute, beautiful and full of animation at all times, but never more so than now, when she started forward on the entrance of the visitor, with her delicate hands uplifted, her fine eyes sparkling through their tears, full of hope and inquiry, and her lips parted, showing the whiteness and faultless regularity of her teeth.

"You have news for me, General?" she faltered.

"Happily, good news, madam," said he, bowing low; "your daughter is safe and well."

"Oh, sir--oh, General Trecarrel, how can I thank you?"

"By composing yourself, my dear madam," he replied, leading her to a chair; but Constance became almost hysterical; she clasped his hand in hers, and almost sought to kiss it, in expression of her deep gratitude, greatly to the confusion of the old soldier, who was Englishman enough to dislike a "scene."

"Under the circumstances, no apology is necessary for the abruptness of my visit," said he; "we are pretty near neighbours, and I hope shall ultimately be friends, though, singular to say, I have never had the pleasure of meeting Captain Devereaux."

These words recalled Constance to a sense--the ever-bitter sense--of the awkwardness of her position, and she faltered out--

"Captain Devereaux is absent at present--abroad indeed--but I hope he shall soon be home now. And our dear daughter--she escaped the rising tide----"

"By fortunately being able to find shelter in the Pixies' Hole, from which she was promptly rescued by a young friend--a brother-officer of mine."

"Oh, how I shall bless him and ever treasure his name."

"He is Mr. Audley Trevelyan, and has conveyed her, in the first place, to old Mike Treherne's cottage. She was drenched by rain and spray, suffering from chill, and overcome with terror."

"My poor little Sybil!"

The General did not add to the mother's alarm by adding that he had left Sybil insensible, but only said--

"She should not return till to-morrow, when perhaps the rain may cease, and the storm abate; but I have ordered my carriage, and she shall have the use of it with pleasure. It must be here in a few minutes now."

Constance could only murmur her heartfelt thanks; but now, more than ever, she felt the peculiarity of her position--its extreme awkwardness, and its doubtful aspect. It was but a few weeks since her husband, now known as Lord Lamorna, had stood by the General's side at the late lord's grave, amid a crowd of bareheaded tenantry, and here they were talking of him as "Captain Devereaux!"

Sybil's cousin-german had saved and protected her, thus cementing the acquaintance begun by chance at the little lake upon the moor, and was with her now too, probably; he was her husband's nephew, and while that husband was absent, with her own rank, name, and his concealed, she dared not avow the relationship that existed among them all! Poor Constance felt her cheek grow paler, with the sickly thoughts that oppressed her heart, as she muttered under her breath--

"Patience yet a while, and, with God's help, dear Richard shall see me through all this!"

In a few words the General, with military brevity, related the whole affair of the evening; the providential discovery of her daughter in the chasm, by her voice, as it was rightly conjectured, having reached the ears of Audley's Thibet mastiff; but for which circumstance she must have perished of cold and exhaustion, or perhaps fallen down the shaft of the old mine and never been heard of again, her fate remaining a mystery to all--contingencies, the contemplation of which appalled the heart of the poor mother, who said in a very faint voice--

"My daughter is long in returning to me. Oh, sir, can it be that you are kindly concealing something from me?"

"Nay, madam, the tempestuous state of the weather and the feeble condition of the young lady herself require----"

"Ah, that is it! my daughter is ill--dying perhaps, while I am idly talking here. Winny--Winny Braddon, my bonnet and cloak; I shall set forth this instant for Treherne's cottage!"

"I assure you, madame, that my carriage was at her disposal, and it shall bring your daughter home."

"Oh, General, the gratitude of my heart----"

"There--there, please don't thank me for a little common humanity," continued the kind old soldier, "but give my compliments--General Trecarrel's compliments--to Captain Devereaux when he returns, and say that I think he ought, in etiquette, to have waited upon me as his senior officer; for such was the fashion in my young days, when two brethren of the sword took up their quarters in a district so secluded as this; and I should like my girls to know your daughter."

"I have a son, too, General--my dear Denzil--who left us but lately to join his Regiment."

"Ah--indeed--you quite interest me. Where is it stationed?"

"In India--far, far from me."

"Of course, you could not have him always at your apron-strings. What, or which, is his corps?"

"The Cornish Light Infantry."

"My own Regiment! I am the full colonel of it: why did he not leave a card with me on appointment?--he must have known of my whereabouts."

A cloud came over the fair open countenance of Trecarrel, and Constance felt that, in the further prosecution of their systematic incognito, a breach of military etiquette and punctilio had taken place.

"My young friend Trevelyan is in the same corps," said the General, after a pause.

Constance knew that too, and that it had been the Regiment of her husband during their happiest days at Montreal; but when with it he had borne his family surname, and _not_ that of Devereaux.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, "When first we practise to deceive!"

So thought Constance, and who could not quite foresee the end of the web. Her present perplexities were increasing, and her usually pale cheeks began to blush scarlet.

But now, to her intense relief, the sound of wheels and hoofs at the door, followed by quick steps in the entrance, announced an arrival, and in a moment more mother and daughter were weeping joyfully in each other's arms.

"Dearest mamma--darling mamma! Oh the joy of being safe with you again! An age seems to have elapsed since I left you this evening!"

And old Winny Braddon came in for her share of caresses, while the General and Trevelyan, though they now began to feel themselves rather _de trop_, looked on with smiles of pleasure. So full of joy was Constance at the restoration of Sybil, that she never noticed the quaint and coarse (though comfortably dry) costume which the careful wife of Treherne had substituted for her wet and sodden habiliments.

Audley's quick and practised eye saw that Constance was a woman possessing more than an ordinary share of beauty and refinement. He took in the whole details of the drawing-room, and perceived by a glance that the occupants of this secluded villa "in the willow-glen--those peculiar Devereaux," as the Trecarrel girls called them, were evidently people of the best and most cultivated taste, for the buhl or marquetterie tables, consoles, and cabinets exhibited selections from the most chaste productions of Dresden and Sèvres; delicate Venetian bronzes, quaint Majolica vases and groups, some relics from Herculaneum; and other objects (more familiar to him) from India and Burmah were there--four-armed gods and other idols in silver or ivory.

Pausing for a moment in her caresses, Constance turned towards Audley Trevelyan with a pleading glance of irresolution, yet one of wonderful sweetness.

"My young friend, Mr. Trevelyan," said the General; "allow me to introduce him, Mrs. Devereaux."

"Oh, sir, to you I owe the gratitude of a lifetime?" she exclaimed in an accent of touching tenderness.

He seemed so like her absent Denzil, that all her heart yearned to him, and in a genuine transport of gratitude she embraced him with such _empressement_, that in a woman so young apparently for her maternal character, and so very handsome too, rather perplexed Trevelyan, who said,

"You owe me no thanks--indeed, indeed, you do not. I did but my duty--I obeyed only the dictates of humanity; and I assure you that you are quite as much indebted to Rajah as to me, Mrs. Devereaux."

The name he used recalled her to herself, and the peculiarity of her position as regarded him--the secret she could not yet reveal; and turning away as an expression of confusion come over her face, she stooped, and casting her arms round the great Thibet mastiff, caressed it with a grace and playfulness that partook of girlish glee.

By this time Sybil was reclining wearily, and with an air of utter exhaustion and languor, on a sofa. Her face was very pale, save when a kind of hectic flush passed over it, and her eyes seemed unnaturally bright. Even to the unpractised observation of the two gentlemen it was evident that they had better retire, and, after exchanging a glance suggestive of this, they both rose, hat in hand.

"You will, I hope, permit me to call to-morrow and make inquiries?" said Audley Trevelyan.

Constance bowed, and her tongue trembled: what she said she scarcely knew, but it was a muttered wish of some kind, with many thanks and reference to her husband's return, all oddly combined. That she laboured under some species of hidden restraint was quite apparent to the perception of him she addressed, and also to the General; and so, after the usual well-bred wishes that both ladies should soon recover from the effects of their recent terror, they withdrew together; and as the sound of their carriage wheels died away in the willow avenue, all other sounds, and the light too, seemed to pass away from Sybil, as she sank gradually back, became insensible, and was conveyed to bed by Winny Braddon and her startled mother, who summoned medical aid without delay.

The next day found her in a species of nervous fever. She had undergone too much of mental fear and bodily suffering for a nature so delicate as hers, and remained for a time unconscious of all around her. Slowly and gradually, like water filtering through a rock--as some one describes the struggles of returning sensibility--she became aware that she was in her own bed, with her mother on one side and Winny Braddon on the other in watchful attendance; then, with a shudder, she would recall the horrors she had escaped, and clasp her hands as she had done ten years before, when a little child in prayer.

Then exhaustion would bring sleep, but a sleep haunted by dreams, and, at times, visions wild as those of an opium-eater; thus, for many a night, long after this period, the episodes of that eventful evening would come back to memory with all their harrowing details: the advancing tide rolling against the impending cliffs and thundering in the Pixies' Hole, after it had swallowed the drenched sand; her retreating step by step fearfully and breathlessly before it, in terror of being drowned on one hand and of falling down the mine on the other!

Anon, she would imagine herself swung up that terrible shaft through darkness and space, and that the rope was just on the eve of _parting_, when she would wake with a half-stifled scream to find that she was in the arms of her mamma, who was soothing and caressing her.